HELP! I Missed A Workout! What Should I Do?

It’s inevitable. You will at some point miss a workout. If you’re doing P90X, P90X2, Insanity, or any other Beachbody workout, what should you do if you miss a workout? What if you just miss a few days? What if you miss an entire week?

Those are questions I get frequently so I decided it was about time to dedicate a blog post to answering them for you. If you’re in this situation (or even if you’re not) make sure you read this blog post from START to FINISH. I have a very important warning message that you need to read at the end.

So let’s start with question 1…

P90X What If I Miss A Day?

(just replace “P90X” with whatever fitness program you’re doing)

If you just miss a day of your P90X workout then you have 2 options. Option 1 is to make the day you missed your rest day for the week. So say you missed your workout on Wednesday (and in this example you started P90X on a Sunday). That means on Thursday you would be doing whatever workout you missed, on Friday you would do whatever workout you would typically be doing on Thursday (since you’re a day behind), and on Saturday you would be doing whatever workout you would typically be doing on Friday.

Then on Sunday you’ll be right back on schedule and you can continue on with the P90X workout schedule like usual. Does that make sense? I hope so! :-)

Option 2 is to just say screw it, and to move on while sticking with your usual schedule. So with our example above, you missed your Wednesday workout. On Thursday you would do whatever your typical Thursday workout is, Friday you’d do your typical Friday workout, and so forth.

I would recommend going for option 1 so you’re not missing any of the workouts.

What If I Miss 2 to 6 Days?

If you miss 2 to 6 days, then you have 3 options.

Option 1- You can say screw it and just move on with your typical workout schedule (like in option 2 above).

Option 2- You can just do the workouts you missed during your recovery week to make up for them then.

Option 3- You can re-do the entire week. This option is best if you miss 3 or more workouts.

I would definitely recommend options 2 and 3 over the first option. There’s really no right or wrong option between the last two. Just pick one and move forward!

What If I Miss A Week Of P90X?

If you miss an entire week (or more then 1 week) then the easiest thing to do would be to just start at the week you missed, and then continue on with your schedule like usual.

If you miss more then 3 weeks of your workout, then at that point you should seriously consider re-committing yourself to your workout, and then starting over at day 1 of your fitness program. If you’re missing that many workouts (and it’s not because of medical issues) then you definitely have some commitment issues that you need to address.

WARNING – You’re On A Slippery Slope…

This is a BIG warning that should NOT be discounted.

Skipping just one workout makes it easier to skip another one. And another one. And another one. Then an entire week is gone. Then several weeks. Then before you know it, months have gone by and you haven’t worked out. You then are looking down at your gut that is expanding versus shrinking and wondering what happened.

As soon as you start skipping workouts (even just one), you are on a very, very slippery slope. It gets easier and easier to justify why you can’t workout. You don’t have the time, you’re too tired, your pet hamster died, etc. etc. You’ll come up with all kinds of creative excuses.

So while it is inevitable that you’ll miss a workout here and there, just do WHATEVER you got to do to get back on to your regular workout schedule ASAP. Otherwise you risk going back to your old ways and throwing all your hard work away.

Morale of the story? Do your best to NOT miss any of your workouts…but when you do miss the occasional workout, do WHATEVER you’ve got to do to get yourself back on track.

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